The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

2012 April PAD Challenge: Day 29

For today’s prompt, take a favorite line or image from an earlier poem this month and re-work it into a new poem. This is a fun exercise that I’ve used to successfully write new poems in the past.

Here’s my attempt:

“Cloudy with a chance of line breaks”

We have a poem to write slash
poem, as if we could avoid
the way our pens hash and re-hash.
We have a poem to write slash
read, buying books with extra cash–
new words shining like brilliant toys.
We have a poem to write slash
poem, as if to cloud a void.

At the maternity ward, I thought of what Papi shared with me. He was 14
when he ran away from home. In the mornings he collected dreams that tangled
on the barbwire fence his father built with words. I believe for a short while
his spirit receded little by little, until he became an orphan with living parents.

Things would be different! Her wail pirouetted from the hallway. It towed
a universe bigger than something I could not reference. There were roots
in the underpinning of motherliness that needed her pulse and comeliness.
The indoor voice of my childhood rose, I felt the tail of time as it scurried
inside me; the scholarship to the school of dreams was granted. The nurse
brought her in to me swaddled in a white hospital blanket stamped St. Joseph.

I was still undone by the c-section, the sunrise and midnight of birth, and the lavish
hope of getting things right. I looked at the tiny folds of flushed skin and eyes now
too quiet to speak to mine. Suddenly thoughts whisked to the story of how my
mother’s cousin lost her boy. Suicide. Who gets over a death like that?

Mami’s cousin recounted the tragedy when we visited her in Puerto Rico
on a rainy afternoon.. After she got the catch-up list with mom out, her tone
switched gears like a low rumbling vehicle at a red light Hanged himself.
She squirreled junk in her tiny house, including the cursed noose he used
I wondered if her hording was a way to trap misfortune, bury it under waste
and novellas filled with absent-hearted ghosts.

The spirituality of loss and starting lines cannot be surmised like mathematics
on the chalkboard. My soul ached for the break of things that words cannot
piece together. Yes, our story would be different. It will survive poor parentage.
We will have samwiches, bike rides, the sandbox, first-day-of-school-dual-jitters,
band aids, tea-cups, Jesus, communion, goodnight moon, feathery pillows and laughs
lots of laughs like Easter eggs hidden for the point of being found.

A slash of red
And drizzling ribbon
Lay puddled at her feet
As she feafully
Quivered in his hands
The slice barely felt
As he cradled her head
And the moon captured
The drops of crimson
On his steeling blade

It’s the racket others make
that gives her away.
And yet, today, the rock
I hold ready makes no mark.
They’re actually partying
there among the scarlet
bottle brushes, and as I
approach ready to defend
they take flight – at least
a dozen drunken
honeyeaters.

The first time you did it…
I cried.
But now abhorrence makes me shiver.
Nothing you will do or say will soothe the
Me and
Make me forget.
Too far. Too deep. Too low.
Irritation and indignation are puny words.
Aggression and loathing
Do not half begin to explain what I feel.
Resentment. Regret….

With a brutal hard fist
I try to chase back the darkness of ignorance
But the darkness is in my heart
To be scrutinized and judge
Something that has Lived, breathed, cried, died
Somehow the wires got crossed
The mixture’s off
Alone in my dark and silent space
My pain comes Slithering in to corrupt the perfect scenes of my dreams
I wait for them to reach me, the safety of dreamland
to embrace me, wrap me
but there is nothing left
just a nightmare that cackles and hisses
as it holds me close in its cold embrace

The girl in the faded blue jeans balanced on the edge
Fascinated by the agitated water
Ten feet below.
Angry waves, wind whipped white caps
Water’s violent force pounded the rocks.
On another day, a sunny day, the splash of water
Would have tossed white diamond sparkle through a blue sky,
And she might have smiled.
But on this day, ominous gray clouds hung heavy,
Water’s splash cold, threatening.
The girl in the faded blue jeans put her face in her hands and cried.
Without the courage to leap, she could only hope to lose her balance
And fall.

The first letter is awkward. Materializing
through scribbles the framework of conversation.
Often stumbling, like learning to dance with a
new partner. The reply trades leading role and
adds new steps. Reply step reply step.

Your voice broke in, shattering my reverie
And there’s no way I couldn’t see
The pain you were in,
And the pain it
Would cause
Me.
I
Wished you
Would go away,
But that’s not really
Fair to say, so you can stay.
One breath and I’ll enter the broken fray.

I can recognize it immediately.
The way in which you walk.
Or hold your head to one side.
Or speak of others or not,
Or do not speak of yourself.
The way you drive your car.
The way you use colloquial language.
The smile you present.
I can recognize it immediately.

Slowly passing clouds
give shape to dreams
while I find words to describe them,
a bull, a cow,
a warrior under the sun,
proud and free,
timeless associations
of words and sky
and infinities
in a finite world
touching imagination.
This is my time
yet timeless
to dream
and dream constellations
beyond my visions,
darkness above sky
unknown Heavens
beyond,
while visions return
to jet contrails
streaking
fantasies
timeless journeys taken
in an afternoon.

Dear Ringo,
Ok so we lost! Give me a break would ya?
Oh yeah! Give my ma and sis a break too, you
miserable sonofamick! They cook, clean, sew,
put you first all the time and hardly ever complain
about the fact that when you’re not out in your
cab, you’re watching ball at the stadium or in the bar.
I get kinda fed up with you putting me and them down all
the time so why don’t you just shuddup?
Pick me up at 12 will ya it’s an early start – bring money
for dogs and beer.

Many will be lost,
some will move to the mountains-
Lands once familiar,
will be the haunts of fishermen,
who once lived on the land submerged.
Maps will be redrawn
and the blame will be apportioned
and some will blame sun-flares
and some will blame the corporations,
but no-one will share responsibility,
it’ll still be me, me, me!
when the seas rise.